Metabolomics and Fetal-Neonatal Nutrition

Research on nutrition in the pediatric clinic is increasingly concerned with the health of neonates and children rather than with their nutritional needs. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that poor or excessive nutrition, above all in the first periods of life, has an important impact on the development of chronic metabolic diseases, both in the pediatric age and in adulthood. To improve the understanding of the relations among nutrition, integrated metabolism, and health, nutritionists are evaluating the metabolomic approach has an important tool to establish single nutritional phenotypes, that is, the way in which diet interacts with individual's metabolisms so as to provide a complete definition of their health and diseases.